Is it still in the Water – Chemotherapy for Fish?

Two different reports today on drugs in the water, one from Canada dealing with a study of whether or not the water is being processed properly to ensure the drugs are out of the water when recycled, and the second and more disturbing article from drugs in the water in India, where many of the product we take today are made.

The fish and people in India have a lot more to worry about it appears as the laws are a bit more lax and levels are 150 times what we have in the US.

“If you take a bath there, then you have all the antibiotics you need for treatment," said chemist Klaus Kuemmerer at the University of Freiburg Medical Center in Germany, an expert on drug resistance in the environment who did not participate in the research. "If you just swallow a few gasps of water, you're treated for everything. The question is for how long?"

Water evaporates and goes back up into the atmosphere, so is there the possibility that the rain we get in a few weeks could also contain drugs? BD

A study conducted by Université de Montréal researchers on downstream and upstream water from the Montreal wastewater treatment plant has revealed the presence of chemotherapy products and certain hypertension and cholesterol medications.

Bezafibrate (cholesterol reducing medication), enalapril (hypertension medication), methotrexate and cyclophosphamide (two products used in the treatment of certain cancers) have all been detected in wastewater entering the Montreal treatment station. However, only bezafibrate and enalapril have been detected in the treated water leaving the wastewater treatment plant and in the surface water of the St. Lawrence River, where the treated wastewater is released.

http://www.physorg.com/news152196608.html

(AP) -- When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.

And it wasn't just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet - a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.

Drug factories in the U.S. and Europe have strictly enforced waste treatment processes. At the Patancheru water treatment plant, the process is outdated, with wastewater from the 90 bulk drug makers trucked to the plant and poured into a cistern. Solids are filtered out, then raw sewage is added to biologically break down the chemicals. The wastewater, which has been clarified but is still contaminated, is dumped into the Isakavagu stream that runs into the Nakkavagu and Manjira, and eventually into the Godawari River.

http://www.physorg.com/news152197833.html